


Delicious

by shadhahvar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: F/M, Heartbeats Zine 2018, Mother's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 05:36:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13968486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadhahvar/pseuds/shadhahvar
Summary: The girls decide they must have this Mother's Day bejust so, and Takeshi helps them fulfill their vision.





	Delicious

**Author's Note:**

> Written for _Heartbeats_ , a Yuri!!! On Ice charity fanzine project. This was for the PG-13 zine, based on the love language of "Gift Giving."
> 
>  **Edit 12.06.2018:** Now with beautiful art draw by the amazing and talented [rinle!](http://rin-le.tumblr.com/) I'm so incredibly touched by this, it's an absolutely heart-warming piece. Thank you so much!

Takeshi had slipped out of bed hours before sunrise, leaving a sleeping Yuuko behind, rolling over and mumbling a soft complaint before she fell back into deeper sleep once more. He was the earlier riser, managing most of the bento during the week for not only their girls, but for themselves, to have lunch on hand for long hours at the Ice Castle.

He hadn’t thought he’d be that man ten years ago, fourteen and casually grateful to his mother for the bento she’d help him make before he’d be racing off to school, or early practices, when he was helping Yuuko or Yuuri before classes. Ten years later and he looks up creative bento designs on YouTube and learns his artistry is more deft with a knife than he’d ever expected.

Maybe he could credit ice skating for that. It was a little like skating on knife-blades, if they were on the thicker side of things.

Now he was up with his three daughters making a quiet mess in the kitchen, two step-stools and one inverted milk crate in use as they helped him with their Mother’s Day Plan, which in prior years had consisted of little more than giving Yuuko a bouquet of flowers and spending a nice Sunday with her and usually one of their two grandmothers, while Takeshi oversaw the operation of the rink. They sometimes had business from mothers and children interested in skating during the public sessions, but for the most part, there were few people who came by on Sunday’s before Yuuri had come back to town.

“Is the fish almost ready?”

“Not yet!”

“The miso’s done!”

“Where are all the nice plates?”

He scooped Lutz off the counter where she’d climbed and set her just as politely and firmly back down on the step-stool as he knew she would politely and firmly climb right back up in her hunt for the proper plate.

“Let me pull them down for you. Loop, did you finish cracking the eggs?”

Loop glanced over from the rice cooker, nodding her head and lifting up her phone. He never knew what precisely that meant; his daughters had a savvy for social media that Takeshi found both amusing and alarming for a trio of irrepressible skating fans. “I did! Can I film you making the _tamagoyaki?_ ”

All three girls looked up to him expectantly, Axel flicking her eyes back to the pan where she was manning the cooking of a fish. She had the thin metal mesh Takeshi insisted they use when dealing with oil; it was what he insisted on when they were all helping him in the kitchen. Watching out for knives, boiling oil, and splatters all at once would have been hectic with one child. He was beyond resigned and learned to cope with the chaos of raising three children simultaneously.

Most days, he appreciated the challenge of it. Other days, he realised that was also in part because he wasn’t the disciplinarian parent. That, ironically or not, had ended up being Yuuko’s natural role.

He supposed he should step up once they were teenagers and thinking about dating, but if they were anything like their mother, he’d do better to simply let them take their own course and be there as support should they need it along the way.

“Yes, all right, but just you, Loop. Axel, that fish smells ready, pull it off the heat and I’ll use that burner for the _tamagoyaki_.”

Loop jumped down with both fists pumping the air, collecting her step stool and dragging it over while Axel slid the fish over with a cheery, “Okay!” He fished out the rectangular pan he wanted, checking over his shoulder and seeing Lutz attempting to scale the counter again, staring up at the cupboards.

“Can you grab the sugar?” he asks as he picks her up and sets her down again, thwarting his daughter and pulling down the plates she’d been after, all the small samplers, the nicely decorated serving dishes, and the bowls Lutz liked best, compared to the ones Axel and Loop preferred.

Lutz eyed the dishes before nodding her head and digging into the proper cupboard, pulling out the sugar and setting it on the counter. “Where’s the serving tray?”

“Check the hall storage area, if not there, then behind the bookcase next to the sofa.”

Lutz darted off, Axel stepping off her stool and brining the serving plates to the sink. “I’m washing these,” she said, fixing Takeshi with a look, then promptly grinning and using her foot to nudge the step stool over to her next target.

Loop watched him with a grin. “Eggs are there,” she said, motioning as politely as she could with her phone in her hand. “The range is hot!”

Oil in the pan, he used a napkin to spread it around evening, then set it to the side in a small bowl. “Measure a tablespoon of sugar for the eggs,” he asked Lutz as she returned, smudged with dust but the tray triumphantly in hand.

She nodded, “Mmhm!” Bringing her milk carton around to take up space next to Axel at the sink. She was quick, coming back for the sugar and using an actual tablespoon to measure the sugar. She was over-generous as she dumped it into the eggs, Takeshi raising an eyebrow but letting it pass. Yuuko wouldn’t mind.

Cooking the thin layer of egg and folding it over several times, scooting it back with chopsticks, pouring in more egg, and repeating the process, Takeshi tried herding the three monkey’s he called daughters through the rest of breakfast preparation, Lutz finally winning her battle to scale the countertop when he was too busy with the eggs to be able to get her back down.

“Found it!” she declared, finding the chopstick rest she’d been determined to find (it went best with the bowl for rice she picked out, she said, as if this were the only truth), getting back down without a problem aside from the near-heart attack Takeshi suffered when it looked like she was going to slip.

She caught herself, spun in an impossibly small place, then sat, slid off the counter, and darted back to the forming dining tray.

“Do you think we should have put something in the _tamagoyaki_?”

Pressing a spatula down over the finished sweet egg omelette in question, Takeshi hiked his shoulders up and shot his daughter a smile. “Maybe next year.”

Axel had plated the fish in the meantime, hunting through their produce to find a few leaves she deemed appropriate as garnish. He didn’t know how arugula had really made that but, but it did look nice, albeit untraditional, and functionally useless. The rice cooker sang its song letting them know it was done, Loop hopping back off the stool she’d set up to film her father making the egg omelette and going on tip-toe trying to read the display face.

“Rice is ready!”

“Where’s the vase?”

“Check next to the family shrine,” Takeshi said, opening the fridge to be confronted with three different bouquets of carnations stashed in various places. “Girls?”

Loop glanced his way, Lutz hooking an arm around his waist to peer in from around his side. “Oooh, the flowers held up!”

“Isn’t one bouquet usually enough?”

Lutz wrinkled her nose. “Tou-san, there’s three of us. That means three times the Mother’s Day flowers.”

“Right!”

“Exactly! We asked Minako-sensei and Katsuki-san, they both agreed.”

A nice thought, and a baffling one. There wasn’t enough room on the serving tray for more than half of one of those bouquets, but he figured the girls already had some idea in mind. How much he and Yuuko appreciated that idea would remain to be seen.

“I see…”

Loop was peering at the sweet egg omelette roll on the cutting board, making speculative noises in the back of her throat. She’d left Lutz to use the rice scooper to form a nice bowl of rice in the bowl she’d picked out, meaning she was ready for her next self-volunteered task.

“Can I slice the egg omelette?”

She held up a paring knife; Takeshi practically skidded across the kitchen to hold his hand out for it, offering her the serrated bread knife instead. “Yes, with this knife.”

She set the paring knife in his hand, taking the larger knife with apparent (but thankfully responsible) joy. “How big are the cuts?”

He indicated over the rolled sweet egg omelette. “About the width of my index finger, or…” He studied his daughter’s hands, flashing her a grin. “Two of yours. Be careful! Don’t make me explain to your mother how you ended up needing to go to the clinic today because you cut yourself instead of her breakfast meal.”

Her focus became laserlike on the sweet egg omelette, eyes flashing with challenge.

“I’ve got this,” she informed him, measuring the width of two fingers and taking a careful, deliberate cut with the knife.

Watching this progress, he nodded. “Just like that,” he said, before he was being summoned to fetch down the particular glass Lutz wanted to use, help Loop pour the miso into its own bowl, approve of the way two of his girls were laying out the tray laden with foods and a growing collection of sides (the pickled _daikon_ was a nice touch), along with a glass of water and steeping tea. Axel placed an _amanatsu_ on the tray, taking up a decent part of one corner with sheer solid citrus fruit.

It was definitely a meal, but not out of range for what Yuuko could pack away when determined.

After being handed one of the bouquets of carnations, the others having been distributed around the house as far as he could tell, including the bathroom. (He’d been instructed not to move those. He’s not sure why his daughters think he would, but the request is almost enough for him to go look before he’s pulled away by something else.)

“All ready?”

Loop held up her phone, a grin on her face. Axel and Lutz took their positions on either side of the tray. Before she picked it up, Lutz dug into her sweatshirt pocket to pull out her phone and offer it up to Takeshi, as if the fact he also had a smart phone didn’t matter in the slightest.

“Take pictures,” she said, expression entirely solemn. “Loop is handling the live filming.”

“Yep! You take the still shots, I’m getting everything in motion!”

He nodded, keeping his expression solemn, though he knew as well as they did the request amused him. “None of this is getting uploaded to YouTube later, right?”

The girls exchanged looks and grinned as one, shrugging their shoulders.

“Nope!”

“Uh-uh!”

“No way!”

That, too, was difficult for him to believe.

Regardless, he accompanied them down the short hall to their bedroom, knocking on the door for them, hearing a remarkably awake voice call out, “Come on!”

His girls walked in ahead of him, carrying their tray and smiles, Takeshi balancing the bouquet in its vase between his chest and his arm to capture the look on Yuuko’s face as the girls marched in with breakfast and their declarations, layered one over another.

“We made you breakfast!”

“Happy Mother’s Day!”

“I cooked the fish!”

“I made the rice!”

“I cut the _tamagoyaki_ , even if Tou-san made it!”

He held up the flowers and waved them around, settling them back on his shoulder as Yuuko flashed him a beautiful, grateful smile. The happiness visible on her face went straight to his heart. From the unexpected nature of her pregnancy and their subsequent marriage—in consideration before then, simply moved up at the realisation—to how she’d carried through a pregnancy that had left him bringing her in and out of the hospital for the countless potential complications and warnings about carrying triplets as safely as possible to term…

Yuuko had become an amazing person to him as he grew up. She’d gone from amazing girlfriend and future wife to incredible wife and masterful mother just the same way she’d gone from that annoying, but cute, girl at the ice rink to that amazing young woman who inspired and supported her friends to that gorgeous, wonderful young woman he fell firmly and irrevocably in love with to now, his radiant wife, smiling with tears in her eyes as their three little girls laid out their gift of breakfast, and Takeshi lifted his daughter’s phone to capture the greater gift on camera: his happy, healthy, loving family, and the miracle of their own form of love.

Even he was dewey eyed when he made his way to their bedside, putting the flowers in their vase on her bedside table. Their eyes met, Takeshi smiling, blinking too rapidly. Yuuko’s eyes showed she understood the reason, her face softening even more in ways he’d take a lifetime to memorise as thoroughly as he wished.

“Happy Mother’s Day,” he said, his _I love you_ implied.

“Thank you,” she said, the girls clamoring all around her, waiting for her to take her first bite. _I love you too._ She lifted her chopsticks, picking up a piece of sliced sweet egg omelette and dipping it in the catsup Lutz had helpfully provided as a side. “Mmm,” she hummed, eyes closing as she smiled, swallowing her first bite. “Delicious!”

The delighted grins on the faces of their girls, the happiness and pleasure on Yuuko’s face, and the happiness he felt beating in his chest alongside his heart were all rather delicious, he decided. Like the best recipe for life he could have imagined being given to them unprompted and unplanned.

He wouldn’t change any of its ingredients for the world.


End file.
